Let’s talk PS4: will it take console gaming to the next level?

The Ars OpenForum has some predictions about Sony’s newly announced console.

Sony announced the new PS4 this week, and here at Ars we calculated the size of its DualShock 4 touchpad, reported on its horsepower, found out whether it will block used games, and we even learned that Jimmy Fallon is pretty special. So, as the PS4 approaches, it’s fair to say the new console is under our editors' microscopes, but also those of our readers.

What kind of impact is the Playstation 4 going to have on console, social, mobile, and PC gaming? The console won't be arriving until the holidays, but in the meantime, the confirmed details give us lots to speculate about. Ars OpenForum readers are discussing these details in the thread “The Next Generation: Playstation 4 and XBox Next.”

About that processing power

Matrices is not particularly impressed: “What is it that can actually be expected from this memory speed and size specification? Because based on what we know of the rest of the hardware—namely, that the GPU is pretty anemic on its own terms—there will be plenty of hardware bottlenecks long before those memory specs are even relevant when it comes to rendering power.”

Members in the thread have speculated what all this hardware will mean for the cost of the console. Wwensays, “it needs to be $400 or lower. The gaming industry doesn't exist outside the rest of the economy, which is mostly down around the world…I expect this generation’s life span to be the norm for the next as well, but in my opinion, the library of games is going to make more of a difference than extra radical shaders or polycounts or bifuricated motion blur with multithreaded steam valves or whatever those game makers are into today.”

When it comes to the cost speculation, Throatwobbler Mangrove also joins in and draws some comparisons to Nintendo’s newly released Wii U, a next-gen console that many OpenForum members feel is underpowered: “Again though, rumours (cough) are that Nintendo is not making a profit on the WiiU. Sure the controller is an expense, but it's only 1 resistive-touch screen with the processing done at the WiiU. The anemic hardware specs, and Nintendo is still selling it at a loss at ~$300? So how in the heck the PS4 cost will be reasonable without Sony taking a bath (when they're already pretty wet) is just beyond me.”

How will social play out?

The new social elements of the PS4 have been covered in some of our previous reports, but OpenForum member Draxlithhas some thoughts about them: “How come no one mentioned the "watch friends' playing" bit yet? I think that's one of the coolest bits. For those that didn't catch it, you can invite friends to watch you playing, and can even pass control to them all via PSN. That's nuts, and yes, gimmicky, but friggin cool. They also said it has built in support for uStream to stream gameplay, if you're into that.”

HappyBunnyagrees: “I think the video sharing and live streaming stuff is going to be a big deal. Streaming gameplay or sharing videos of games is becoming pretty popular, and having that integrated as a core system feature is going to be really nice.”

Wwenadds that part of the appeal of the social features is not just the ability to watch others’ gameplay, but also to record. “I thought it was interesting, because I watch a lot of Lets Play while playing Skyrim or something. IIRC, it currently takes some expensive kit to record gameplay from consoles for an LP. Unless you're set on becoming an LP Superstar (Mortus?), not many do that. Cam LPs are awful. That's a niche category of people though.”

Draxlithmakes and interesting prediction about the impact social will have on gaming and Internet buzz: “No, not because you or I are going to go 'I can share videos? Sold!', but because from launch day (assuming it works as advertised), YouTube and Facebook will be flooded with PS4 videos and screens. Let's Plays, Walkthroughs, and so on will all come out first and more often on PS4, meaning that if you were to Google a multiplatform game, you are likely going to see it running on a PS4 because every PS4 owner could be uploading their videos. This is downright genius from a standpoint of all the free marketing they are going to get out of this.”

And then there’s the Xbox

Sony’s first to bat in announcing its next generation console this year, but Microsoft has said it will announce its XBox successor in April. The OpenForum members provide some analysis about what may happen as Microsoft gets closer to the big reveal on its own console.

TheDoomsdayMonstersays, “Man...I would pay to be a fly on the wall of the hastily assembled meeting at Microsoft. The PS4 is going to have (assuming that the Durango leaked specs are correct) double the ROP's, 50 percent greater GPU power (6 extra compute units), and more bandwidth than Durango; I can see the jaws on the floor from Microsofts engineers at this very moment.”

Deviation is focused on game selection: “The vast majority of the games I purchased for my Xbox 360 have been third-party games. If the third-party titles are pretty much guaranteed to never look or perform better on Microsoft's hardware this generation, it comes down to the exclusive content. With Sony in a better position this time around and with Microsoft just not having much in the way of first party content (what do they have past Halo, Forza, and the deal for Gears of War?) I might skip the next Xbox entirely. That's also one of the reasons I'm so excited about the improved controller.”

What’s your analysis?

What about you? What are you thinking about the gaming landscape now that some of the details about PS4 are public? Register for an account to participate in the discussion, or share your thoughts in the comments below.

Promoted Comments

I'm still not sure things are all hunky-dory in the future landscape of used PS4 games. The story on Ars that reported Sony's statement that used games would be allowed also had an update afterwards:

"Update: Speaking at a roundtable session with the press attended by Ars Technica, Shuhei Yoshida stated that "when you purchase the disc-based games for PS4, that should work on any hardware." When asked whether games would require online registration, Yoshida noted that that decision was up to the publisher. When asked if Sony, as a publisher, would require games to be registered online, Yoshida said, "we are not talking about that plan."

While Yoshida's statement leaves open the possibility that individual publishers can still block used games at will, it's just as likely he was simply leaving the door open for the kind of "Online Pass" purchase systems that already routinely limit certain online game functions in used copies of games. So while there's still a bit of wiggle room in Sony's public comments, we'd also caution against reading to much into what Yoshida did (or didn't) say."

119 Reader Comments

I mostly use my ps3 as a media device. As far as gaming goes it's really only used for the big exclusives: Metal Gear, God of War, Heavy Rain, etc. The most interesting thing to me as far as the gaming aspects go is that developers will start designing for 8 cores. I mostly game on the pc, and it's frustrating to have a friggin i7 be the bottleneck because the game is designed to use one or two cores (I'm looking at you, Total War series)

I'm only interested in consoles because their hardware specs affect pc game ports. That being said, I think it's too early to speculate on which next gen console will be "best", given that Sony did not reveal all that much and Microsoft has yet to announce anything.

So far, the PS4 seems to be more speculation than fact. There are no real hardware specs, only some vague references to next gen CPU and graphics. Also, there was no mention on pricing or form factor. So it's far too early to start debating. We need more data from both Sony and Microsoft.

P.S. the placement of the trackpad on the center of the controller seems very awkward to me...

I agree with Draxlith on the video sharing. It's simply genius. Even though I probably won't personally use it, A whole other generation of young player will. Since it's suppose to be using some special separate chip, I can see Microsoft struggling to offer an alternative. They will probably eventually offer some capture dongle and eventually integrate it in their slim version down the road, but it's probably not going to be as seamless as what Sony is proposing.

I know I'll be all over youtube looking at those gameplay video when the console will launch... especially if the price at launch is more than 400$...

People will crave for this console watching youtube gameplay video. Nice move Sony.

No used games, I'm not buying. Unless the price of new games drop to $25 or less. Can't afford to pay $50-$60 for every game I want to play. Honestly 100% of every sale @ $25 vs 30ish% of all sales @ 50$, they would make more money.

Staff from Sony confirmed after the event that the system will run used games. So the ball is in Microsoft's court on that one.

No matter what Sony or Microsoft say, I'm not making any decision until about 6 months after both have been released. I prefer to buy the news, not the rumor.As it is, I may completely skip this upcoming console generation.

I used to but then I stopped even doing that. Between the Cinavia protection that keeps me from streaming my legitimately ripped BR movies, and buying a $99 AppleTV which barely uses any power instead of my old 60GB first-gen PS3 (the one with BC), its just not worth it. Plus the PS3 controller is always down on battery whenever I go to use it.

As far as the PS4, it seems like it might be able to remedy the 2nd problem (power consumption), but I still expect Cinavia to be there, and we have no idea if it'll have an IR port for a controller that lasts longer than two weeks unplugged.

I'm still not sure things are all hunky-dory in the future landscape of used PS4 games. The story on Ars that reported Sony's statement that used games would be allowed also had an update afterwards:

"Update: Speaking at a roundtable session with the press attended by Ars Technica, Shuhei Yoshida stated that "when you purchase the disc-based games for PS4, that should work on any hardware." When asked whether games would require online registration, Yoshida noted that that decision was up to the publisher. When asked if Sony, as a publisher, would require games to be registered online, Yoshida said, "we are not talking about that plan."

While Yoshida's statement leaves open the possibility that individual publishers can still block used games at will, it's just as likely he was simply leaving the door open for the kind of "Online Pass" purchase systems that already routinely limit certain online game functions in used copies of games. So while there's still a bit of wiggle room in Sony's public comments, we'd also caution against reading to much into what Yoshida did (or didn't) say."

They don't know what they want to do with it. They don't know why you would want to buy it. They don't know how anyone will be able to afford to develop for it, unless every game expects to sell 20m copies. They know it will look to most like a marginal improvement over the PS3.

I thought Nintendo's stumbles were becoming catastrophic, but this is on another level. A new console release with such little interest from the MSM, touting features that already exist in their old console, and showing games that, for the most part, look like slight upgrades to the PS3. This compared to the quantum leap that we got last generation with programmable graphic pipes.

To top it off their premier showcase was... Killzone. After the fiasco of Killzone 2's concocted early footage, I have to wonder why journalists are just looking at the pretty pictures, with no visible console and other games running on PCs, and taking them at face value. Also, the game is still... Killzone. Chest high walls, health regen, scripted event after scripted event, aim assist, quicktime events, lead-you-by-the-chin, but now its prettier.

So in short, no. It will not take console gaming to the next level, whatever the hell that means.

I wish they implemented some kind of WiiU type functionality. Not that I like WiiU--I've never used it and I think that its restriction to a single user blows away its advantage and the whole perception of the Wii as a party game machine. Nintendo really blew it.

But it would be cool if you could use Sony Vita devices, not as a game streaming device, like they are talking about, but as personal game controllers, for any user playing the game. It could really enhance game play. The big screen would have the battle display, and your Vita would have your personal control--check inventory, select weapons, etc. You could have multiple players with one big screen and multiple Vitas. In fact they should make this work with -any- smart phone/tablet. They would actually sell more Vitas this way--because users would quickly realize that the Vita users would have an advantage by having actual buttons.

Actually,all they need to do is provide the hooks and let the game developers do this on their own.

Personally I'm very interested in how the PS4 affects multiplatform engines and ports. If the PS4 becomes the developer target, with eight weak-ish x86 cores, does that give them access to excellent multithreaded performance, or is the system hobbled by middling single-threaded performance? If it gives devs impetus to build highly multithreaded engines, it's probably a good thing for PC gaming.

I am really curious about the price point. If AMD is supplying an APU, such an integrated chip will definitely lower the cost of two of the main components. Also consider that AMD is in dire straights these days, they may end up pricing their components aggressively, using the PS4 win to bolster their ARM ambitions in mobile. I think Sony could conceivably ship a competitively priced console.

An APU could also provide a few other potential benefits in the areas of energy use, thermal waste and noise.

Hardware aside, I think the only two compelling features presented were the video sharing and the embrace of indie gaming. If the PS4 truly opens the gate to indie devs, it could create an awesome groundswell of support for the PS4 as a platform.

Am I the only one who believes Sony is keeping some very important feature under the wraps?

They didn't show the box on Wednesday - this makes no sense at all. Why would they not do that? It deprives them of having their device advertised on virtually every news outlet with the iconic picture of some futuristic looking piece of plastic. There's no R&D involved in designing a case, so the idea that some industrial designers are still sweating over this and burnt the deadline is ridiculous . The only reason for this omission I can think of is that this case has some very adavance feature that does require R&D, and that still isn't quite ready. I don't know what this could be - a laser keyboard? Some virtual reality feature? Maybe a completely new interface to connect to fitness devices or custom hardware?

I don't know what to think about the PS4. I have mix filling about it. Has ups and downs.

All they pretty much showed at the press event was that its an "upgraded PS3". Which is good, but I guess I was expecting something more.What I mean, is that even most of the games showed at the even are confirmed to be released on the PS3 (let alone XBox 360). There was nothing that really said "You could not play these games on the PS3 or your current console, you have to get a PS4 to play them as it has the power/feature/etc to make it possible". Expect the the Move game showed. That was a a good example showing what I am trying to say, what they should have done. The game said: Can I draw like this, or experience this game on a different console? No. Only the PS4 has the capabilities for this, I must get a PS4 to enjoy this gaming experience. That is the sensation I should have gotten with most of the games.

But there is E3... so there is still time!

For the specs, it's clear that the console is a powerful system. But I feel a bit insulted that they just throw fancy terms that most people don't know. It has 8GB of RAM! WOOOOOWWW, While it is impressive, it is being shared with the system and RAM. Now while, on PC shared memory graphic card are very poor performance, at least they used GPU optimized memory: GDDR5. But, the CPU will struggle.

For those who don't know, GDDR5 is modified DDR3 chips, where in exchange of reduce density and increase latency, you have high bandwidth. GPU doesn't really care about latency... it care and wants more high bandwidth over anything else. Why? Because it allows the GPU to store and load large data.. such as texture, and process scenes in advance, etc. The CPU in the other hand want low latency.

Also, we have no idea on the speed of the memory. Is it 400MHz? 800Mhz? 60000MHz?Faster chip cost a lot of money... assuming Sony wants to avoid the huge loss they had with the PS3 on each sold, and wants to sale it at a lower price.. it's probably slow memory.

Also, we don't know how the GPU manages memory. Assuming it's a Radeon 7000 series architecture, those cards, while impressive, needs A LOT of memory compared to Nvidia offering with the 600 series. It's just how the architecture was designed. That is fine, but that it means that games have less RAM then thought about.

As the console record a segment of your play to share it, we don't know if it will be using an SSD/HDD to store it or RAM. If it's RAM, then games will have even less of it to work with.

Also, a lot of people are questioning the 8-core AMD... and saying it's really a 4 core CPU, with some technology to make it kinda 8. It's a bit like if Intel says Core i7, 8 core CPU... where they really mean 4 core, but with hyper-threading. That is what people believe, there is a lot of questions and ambiguity on this.

A lot of stuff that was said on the press event about the console where empty promises. There were at no point "We can do it", but rather "We think we can do it".

In addition, all they have been doing it throwing at us buzz words, like we will be exited about it... I guess that's was more targeting for investors rather than gamers, that fine.. but investors didn't buy in, as the stock of Sony went down.

Ok so the console is not ready.. that's fine, and that's fair. Probably Sony is still working on contract with manufactures to know what they can have as deal, to be sure on what specs the console they can have, at the price region they want. That's fine... Nintendo did the same. So how about the controller? Beside the share button, we know nothing. Does it have rumble or was that put aside like the PS3 at release? How about the MAIN FEATURE of the controller, the big fat touchpad? That's like Nintendo going on stage and saying "Here is the WiiU controller, that black box that looks like a screen turned off, we have no comment on it." I mean common. So far, I see no reason or point of the touchpad.. at least with the WiiU game pad, I kinda can see what Nintendo is going for, and it looks fun to try. I don't see it as ground breaking, but looks like a cool feature to have to change the game experience a bit. PS3 touchpad? heeuuuuu... rub my finger on it to make my charter do stuff? Maybe, tap on it, and is like an extra button? Come one! Now, that is gimmicky like crazy! And I am NOT using a touchpad to interact with a game as a mouse. That would be stupid. I would have wanted more info on this, is what I am trying to say.

And how about the console downloading games in advance without me knowing, as it thinks I want to buy it? That will kill my bandwidth limit. Not everyone live in a country that have 100 GB/s internet and unlimited bandwidth. It better have the ability to turn it off. Would be nice to have said if that feature was optional.

How about latency in streaming games over the net? How are you going to solve this problem?

So in result, I am a disappointing in this press event, it raised more questions than answers. However, it has some cool features, it looks interesting, the games looks very nice, I like the streaming demo feature.

Are we still being sold social media integration as a primary and ground-breaking feature? Because that's been pushed before on other games and systems, and it was never a game changer that moved more units in stores.

I think specs are nice, in particular more ram and using a hard rive instead of SSD means massive storage.

Everything is nice except the most important thing of all, the graphic chip. I also feel this is nothing from outstanding for today. When the PS3 was launched, it was the best graphic chip in the market, this will not not be true for the PS4.

If they want to be a cheap console, I think they are going to use an under powered graphic chip but I think most people are willing to pay 400$ to 600$ for the PS4. Im willing to pay the extra bucks, if this console is going to run the next generation games for the next 5 years at least. We saw what happen to the Wii? It was cheap but it could not run the next generation games, it could not even run HD. Of course graphics was not what made it sold so many systems, but still, not being able to watch videos and films in HD at least was awful.

The PS4 should have graphics which can power game that are released in the next 3 to 5 years. If its launched with a medium graphic card, then it will not be a true PS, people always pointed out that PlayStation was the king in graphics vs all other consoles. It may be a a gimmick, but if I pay 500$ for a new console, I want it to deliver the best possible details in games.

As for the social sharing, this is stupid feature. Sharing game videos? If I want to socialize I will invite some friends home, and if I play alone, I don´t need to tell the world what im playing, im not a 10 year old kid that needs to share everything, in particular what you just did on a specific game. And even putting a share button for this... Oh my, this is not something people will say, ahh look, I can share in Facebook, I will get a PS4. Its a stupid feature, and even while some people think it rocks, I will probably never use it. I have enough of all this dumb sharing everything. What is next? A toiled that shares when you are doing your business online?

The controller is very nice, but I really expect the new PS4 would come with the virtual reality headset that Sony was developing. It seems this is not the case. Its has nothing amazing that will make people jump from their current PS3 to the PS4. So far at least, its just a PS3 with better hardware. Sony should deliver something truly unique with the console, and if its not the virtual headset, then it should be next generation graphics. For everyone that says graphics are already amazing, they are still not video live amazing, so they can be better.

I will say that video games have come to the next level, once you see a game and cannot tell the difference if its 3D of if its a filmed video so realistic it is.

I agree with Draxlith on the video sharing. It's simply genius. Even though I probably won't personally use it, A whole other generation of young player will. Since it's suppose to be using some special separate chip, I can see Microsoft struggling to offer an alternative. They will probably eventually offer some capture dongle and eventually integrate it in their slim version down the road, but it's probably not going to be as seamless as what Sony is proposing.

I doubt this. The extra hardware is for video encoding, which is still possible to do via software. Plenty of games on current generation consoles (e.g. PixelJunk Monsters) are able to take recordings and upload them directly to YouTube without requiring special hardware support.

If the lack of hardware acceleration in the XBox means that they can't compress in real time, then it will just mean that the user has to wait for a short while after the recording is done for it to finish.

No its going backwards, even the 360 with all tis issues was better. And these days modern A+ gaming is dead in the water. Its all shiny pretty on the out side but inside its the USS Septictank. They are selling a car without AC,a radio and wheels..... The Next box is going to be more of the same. Games are going up in cost if you factor in DLC that should have been in the game to start with your average price is more like 80-100.

I'd like to see he Oyua take off but without TF2/HL2 ep2 level graphics I do not think it will get far.

Am I the only one who believes Sony is keeping some very important feature under the wraps?

They didn't show the box on Wednesday - this makes no sense at all. Why would they not do that? It deprives them of having their device advertised on virtually every news outlet with the iconic picture of some futuristic looking piece of plastic.

I don't think they had a deprived coverage for the mere information they gave us.

I think they just want to keep the momentum from now til the launch by showing bits of information at a time. They'll show the box at the GDC, the game streaming function at E3, new PS4 Eye functions in the late summer, etc. When Microsoft will show the new Xbox, they'll show something to pop in the news too, etc.

Marketing stuff.. Loyal fans and journalists will hate it but it's definitively a good way to create anticipation at a minimal cost.

I used to but then I stopped even doing that. Between the Cinavia protection that keeps me from streaming my legitimately ripped BR movies, and buying a $99 AppleTV which barely uses any power instead of my old 60GB first-gen PS3 (the one with BC), its just not worth it. Plus the PS3 controller is always down on battery whenever I go to use it.

As far as the PS4, it seems like it might be able to remedy the 2nd problem (power consumption), but I still expect Cinavia to be there, and we have no idea if it'll have an IR port for a controller that lasts longer than two weeks unplugged.

Cinavia has only affected a few of my BR rips. For the contorller, spend the $25 on the bluetooth remote. Replaced the batteries on that thing twice in a few years.

Am I the only one who believes Sony is keeping some very important feature under the wraps?

They didn't show the box on Wednesday - this makes no sense at all. Why would they not do that? It deprives them of having their device advertised on virtually every news outlet with the iconic picture of some futuristic looking piece of plastic. There's no R&D involved in designing a case, so the idea that some industrial designers are still sweating over this and burnt the deadline is ridiculous . The only reason for this omission I can think of is that this case has some very adavance feature that does require R&D, and that still isn't quite ready. I don't know what this could be - a laser keyboard? Some virtual reality feature? Maybe a completely new interface to connect to fitness devices or custom hardware?

I've stated this before in another thread, but it obviously needs restating. Sony doesn't even say they have finalization on all the electronic internals of this new system, therefore they don't know what final thermal threshold to build for. Sony probably has an idea of how they want the console to look. They probably know how large/small they'd like it to be. They surely know what ports they want on the thing. But you can't build a reliable enclosure for a stable system until you finalize the internals and test for what those internals require.

This isn't like HP throwing some crap Core i3 in a big plastic desktop box with a random fan mounted to a punchout on the back.

An enclosure that's actually well thought out has to balance many things, some of which are highly opinionated like desirability, while some are requirements for the system not to melt (original Xbox 360 failure rate, anyone?).

So to spout off there is no "Research and Development" involved in designing an enclosure only proves at best you need to think through your comments and at worst you need to educate yourself.

I wonder looking at the PC-in-a-console components if there will be a Playstation 5? I don't mean, is this the end of the Playstation, but rather is this the end of the idea of a console generation?

If the Playstation is using PC components, will that hardware not be subject to the same upgrade cycle as any PC hardware? Will there be a big reveal of the Playstation 5 in six years, or will just see incremental upgrades over the years?

I suppose the marketing department will want to create a Playstation 5, but that will be quite underwhelming if the hardware is only incrementally better than the last edition of the Playstation 4.

Oh come on, a 7850 isn't the greatest card but calling it "anemic"? It's very capable, and consoles can do more with the same hardware as PCs for various reasons. It is fair to say the chip will be the limitation before the 8GB GDDR5 though, although that also means memory will never be a bottleneck unlike last gen which is good.

The unified pool of memory will be good for passing calculations between CPU and GPU, from what I gather the big limitation to real GPGPU work was passing things between two distinct pools of memory. With one pool both will be able to manipulate the same data without having to pass it back and fourth. GDDR5 may not be ideal for the processor due to its higher latency than DDR3, but that's probably a small detriment in the face of what it will help with.

8 Jaguar cores doesn't sound too bad either, no they don't compete with what we have on PCs, but they'll still likely run circles around the limited Cell and Xenon architectures. And since the OS will have a separate ARM chip running it and there is an dedicated sound processor and video encode/decode hardware, all the Jaguar cores can be truly dedicated to the game.

Regarding Intel in consoles, I think there's a reason both they and Nvidia never kept their console partners long. AMD and IBM licence out their chips and allow the console manufacturer to shrink and modify them as needed, Nvidia and Intel maintain tight control. Microsoft got screwed with the Xbox 1 when Nvidia wouldn't shrink it when they wanted. Similar things happened with the PS3. No one partnered with them twice. And now AMD is in all three 8th gen consoles.

A 3 GHz modern Intel architecture in a console would be awesome no doubt, but I'm sure AMD is willing to go much much lower on margin per part considering their situation.

Console makers have to take each change in cost very seriously, a 10 dollar increase from one chip to another spread through tens of millions of consoles is a big hit for any company. I think a modified 8 core jaguar was a fine choice, all considered.

The mediocre hardware concerns me as a PC gamer. Though the APU might convince more developers to write code that can make significant use of true multi-threading, the GPU will be far from the cutting edge by launch time. Thus, assuming a similar projected life time as the PS3, in 3-4 years time we will once again have PC games that are significantly held back by the need for cross platform development.

Outside of some highly niche market games such as hardcore flight simms developed by the likes of Eagle Dynamics (which STILL don't make use of multi-threading) I really don't see anything that's available now or is likely to be available in the next 12 months that justifies an investment of £1500 in a serious gaming rig. The one possible exception being Star Citizen I suppose. *sigh* heaps of lazy console ports here we come again...

It doesn't matter that the GPU is less spectacular than what's out in the PC marketplace, folks. Video game developers have always had less to work with and done more with it than PC devs, because PC devs spend so much time optimizing for a wide range of hardware and hardly ever optimize exclusively for the top end. There's absolutely nothing wrong with hardware as currently specified.

Other notations: Yes, that was Killzone actually running. Fallon played it on his show. What I saw was pretty damn incredible looking.

I personally can't wait. I'll stick to the mid range sweet spot of PC GPUs, and get a PS4 and enjoy life.

I'm curious about Microsoft's next move. With PS4 being x86/OpenGL, porting to PC is much easier. How is DirectX going to compete with the rest of the market being OpenGL. When it was 3 players, it wasn't a big deal, but with Apple now on Intel, and with the explosion of iOS and Android, it looks like an OpenGL world first, port to DirectX later.

If Microsoft stays with Power chips, they'll be in a world where emerging developers come up on Intel and ARM with OpenGL.

Microsoft could be in a world where porting between their platforms could be harder than something from a competitor.

It doesn't matter that the GPU is less spectacular than what's out in the PC marketplace, folks. Video game developers have always had less to work with and done more with it than PC devs, because PC devs spend so much time optimizing for a wide range of hardware and hardly ever optimize exclusively for the top end. There's absolutely nothing wrong with hardware as currently specified.

Other notations: Yes, that was Killzone actually running. Fallon played it on his show. What I saw was pretty damn incredible looking.

I personally can't wait. I'll stick to the mid range sweet spot of PC GPUs, and get a PS4 and enjoy life.

Exactly. Nothing has really changed except they're using parts we see off the shelf.

Cesar Torres / Cesar is the Social Editor at Ars Technica. His areas of expertise are in online communities, human-computer interaction, usability, and e-reader technology. Cesar lives in New York City.